Brazil – a Land of Improbable Numbers?

(written in 2006 while travelling in Brazil)

Brazil seems to boast many impressive statistics without really trying to. As is often the case you cant really appreciate the scale of things while you are ´on the ground´ – its only later when you read about somewhere you went, or something about the country that it starts to gel in your head.

Even in a tiny village on the Nth Coast that I visited as a jump-off point to a National Park, impressive statistics and facts were awaiting me. The National Park consists of sand dunes rolling across the horizon in every direction. Somehow when it rains the water can only soak into the sand so far then it gets trapped. The result? – lots and lots of blue watered lagoons, contrasting with the undulating fine white sand hills and valleys. The only colours around are blue clear water and extremely white fine sand, illuminated by the scorching sun above. The area and the lagoons are stunningly idyllic, funnily enough no animals, no birds, no plants – just blue and white. It seems such a foreign place, like a moonscape, like no other place on earth ive seen. And then of course there are the statistics…I half jokingly wanted to swim in all the lagoons they were all so yummy – different sizes, temperatures, personalities. So i asked our guide how many of these pristine clear lagoons there were in this park. The answer over 25,000. I assumed my Portuguese had failed me again and had to check on the internet later. Of course he was right. Some the size of 50m swimming pools, some the size of small lakes. It turns out the National Park we were in was the size of greater Sao Paulo (a city of 18 million people). It was impossible to appreciate this when you were in it, because due to the rolling sand dunes you could only see for about 1km into the distance before another dune obscured your view. ´Parque Nacional Dos Lencois Maranhenses´ – if youre in Brazil go and see it, it’s well worth it.

Well these kinds of statistics of scale just seem to be normal in Brazil – it’s just the way it is. Even Brazil’s population at 184 million is nothing to be sneezed at and its land mass is simply enormous, exceeding that of Australia and taking up a sizeable chunk of the whole of Sth America. Fascinating numbers and facts are woven into all aspects of Brazil: geographically, ecologically and even politically its impressive, 115 million people voted in the 2002 elections. Thats a pretty good turn out when you consider how remote some areas are and how disorganised the country can be at times.

Although a massive part of Brazil is obviously in-land there is no escaping its 7000+ km of coastline strewn with beaches. For many Brazilians, beach life is interwoven into their psyche. They seem to know how to utilise beaches as fun playgrounds without messing them up. There are soccer fields, volley ball courts and even mini bars everywhere. So, many beaches you turn up at, no matter how remote will still have someone in a little shack serving icy cold beer and the ubiquitous green coconuts for their clear refreshing coconut juice. Its touristy I guess, but its done in a tasteful way.

The Amazon region alone boasts mind boggling figures. Although it technically spans 8 neighbouring countries, slightly less than half of the Amazon lies within Brazil making it the biggest player. The Amazon basin contains 17% of the worlds fresh water and at the mouth, 12 billion litres per minute pour into the sea. There are 80,000 kms of navigable rivers and big ocean going ships can sail 3500 km up the rivers of the Amazon to Peru.

These are mind blogging figures – all of them close to incomprehensible to the human brain. What does 80,000 kms of rivers look like? How can an oceangoing passenger ship possibly travel 3500kms up a river ? And 12 billion litres of water a minute – how much is that? Well Sydney consumes on average 1.3 billion litres of water per day and there are a lot of minutes in a day (close to 1500) – so the Amazon waterflow is still too big to comprehend. In a day enough water flows out of it to supply about 13,000 Sydney sized cities.

But you wouldnt really want to drink it. It may actually be quite good – Im not really sure but it doesnt look too crash hot. The term freshwater for many of us conjures up images of sparkling rivers and lakes. The Amazon is far from that image. Rivers are different colours classified as Black, White and Clear. but they are basically all just varying shades of Brown. White (latte brown) rivers originate near mountainous regions and are rich in sediment carried down from the Andes. Black rivers (dark reddy brown) originate in lowland areas and get their colour from decaying vegetation. Interestingly this increases the acidity of the water to the point where mosquitoes and other insects cant live in it. So surprisingly parts of the Amazon rivers and jungles are basically mosquito free. There is an interesting spot just near Manaus called the meeting of the rivers where two massive rivers combine into one. One is a Black water river and the other is a White river. Because of the different densities, temperatures and speeds of the two rivers they actually run as separate colours side by side (quite visible) for several kms before they finally mix into a new colour.

Even 20% of the worlds bird species and 20% of the worlds plant species can be found in the Amazon. Although thats impressive, my experience suggested that there was probably only one of each bird covering the 3.6 million sq km. In my few days there I saw about 10 birds. For me the Amazon was a still and empty place devoid of any animals except for the 3 cows that were resident at our jungle bungalow (admittedly due to the Amazons size I saw about 0.0000001% of it). And unlike the tropical rainforests of Nth QLD which come alive at night with weird and wonderful noises, the Amazon was disturbingly quiet (apart from the 3 cows). The theory goes that in places like the Saharan deserts, there are limited watering holes so most of the animals have to turn up there at some point. As a visitor to that region you have a good chance of seeing exotic and wild animals as they venture out of hiding to quench their thirst. By contrast in the Amazon fresh water is everywhere, so the animals can stay hidden…Well this is what we were told anyway. Maybe there are no animals here, maybe its a clever ploy to lure the tourists in. Ill never know.